I am saddened to report that Twinkies have been murdered by an over zealous labor union.

To the best of my knowledge, this is the only recorded case of ‘Twinkie-cide”. It is unclear if The Union can survive this assault on our fundamental principles and values. How, I ask you, how!! can we possibly survive “Life Without Twinkies”??!?

Twinkies maker Hostess plans to go out of business
By Carey Gillam and Tanya Agrawal

Fri Nov 16, 2012 6:08pm EST

(Reuters) – Hostess Brands Inc, the bankrupt maker of Twinkies snack cakes and loaves of Wonder Bread, is seeking a U.S. court’s permission to go out of business after failing to get wage and benefit cuts from thousands of its striking bakery workers.

The 82-year-old Hostess, which has about $2.5 billion in sales and is one of the largest wholesale bakers and distributors of breads and snack cakes in the United States, filed the request with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York early Friday morning. A hearing on the matter is set for Monday.

The Irving, Texas-based company said the liquidation would mean that most of its 18,500 employees would lose their jobs. Hostess immediately suspended operations at all of its 33 plants across the United States as it moves to start selling assets.

“We’ll be selling the brands and as much of the infrastructure as we can,” said company spokesman Lance Ignon. “There is value in the brands. But some bakeries will never open again as bakeries.”

Ignon said the company made final deliveries on Friday of products made Thursday night. Hostess’s top-selling products are its chocolate cupcakes, Twinkies cakes and its powdered sugar and frosted “Donettes.”

Hostess products, particularly the golden, cream-filled Twinkies cakes, are deeply ingrained in American pop culture and have long been packed in school children’s lunch boxes. Entrepreneurs on auction site eBay Inc were asking as much as $100 for a box of 10 Twinkies by Friday morning.

Oh NO! Say it isn’t so!

Can we possibly survive life “Post Wonderbread”? Perhaps.

But life without Twinkies? Unthinkable.

Worse, the article does not even mention “Ho Hos”! I’m sorry, really I am, but everyone knows that Hos are a major part of our life style and economy. Yes, many folks use Hos, but don’t admit it. Yes, Hos are ‘unloved’ far too often. Personally, I’d “love to love” some Hos and show them the appreciation they deserve for their contribution to the smiles on faces all across America. Even those grinning hyenas in Congress who use Hos far more often than the rest of us, but never admit it.

So what are we to do? No Twinkies? I’m sure Pelosi and the San Francisco delegation will not take that lying down. Well, not for long, anyway… There will be marches in the streets. Or, perhaps, “a moving dance ensemble that is presenting a commentary on our present state of intolerance and corruption of shared civil society normative excesses, with cultural sensitivity attuned to our Modern Age”… with “spice pipes” and aroma stations for those who can’t get into the “mutual stress relief” vans…

Then, of course, the Wonderbread Deficit will be causing Moms and Kids everywhere to Wonder what will hold their PB and J now? I mean, I know what holds MY PB as I stroke the ‘jelly’ onto the morning muffin, but think “of the children!!!”. WHO can help them with their PB & J dilemmas? I’m sorry, but “whole wheat” (or worse, “cracked wheat”) is just way too rough, tough, and coarse “for the children”. They NEED the comfort of a soft, spongy, and completely tasteless non-judgmental and compliant ‘foam’ to caresses their young and supple developments… be they PB or Jelly in ‘orientation’ (if not in form…)

This is clearly a national tragedy. And all due to some greedy labor unions who could not be bothered to think of the rest of us. Or ‘think of the Children!!!”

Life without Ho Hos in unthinkable. It is clearly time to march on congress and demand that they assure the continuation of Hos for all (but especially for them). It is also time for “Twinkie Lovers” everywhere to let congress know what they think. Tell them you won’t take this laying down, but how it is important that the Congress will, and demand that they make the Bakers Unions “Bend over and take it!” for the good of the country.

This is an epiphany of a cultural moment. We can not afford to delay. “Stress” will be building up to a climax in the absence of the normal relief provided by Hos and Twinkies. Eventually, this can only result in complete collapse of our self esteem; and a flaccid response from ‘those in power’ is never acceptable.

If we can have a ‘bail out’ for GM, surely we can find a way to assure a strong, powerful, and stiff response to this assault on our, our, “needs”. Or cultural core. Obama is known for his swift and firm resistance to failure of such things, his ‘avoidance of bankruptcy’ for cultural icons like Camaro and Silverado can surly be repeated for this collapse of Hos and Twinkies. Can you imagine YOUR children growing up, deprived of Hos and Twinkies? I certainly can’t. Where would we get our future politicians?

So please, Dear Leader Obama, do it NOW and do it often! We’d all like to watch you in action on this.

29 Responses to Twinkie-cide

No doubt the union guys voted for Barry. AFAIC, they deserve what they got. I’m thinking they won’t much appreciate Barry’s welfare check. The left seems devoid of any concept of how the economy and businesses work. They believe businesses and the rich are bottomless pits of money that they don’t deserve. They don’t see the money goes to these people because they create value. They get money in return. The socialists, to include Barry, are just playing the class warfare game in order to get and keep political power. Romney was dead right about that concept. They don’t see that the rich will react to this money grab. Some people on the talk shows, like Fast Money, have stated the rich are liquidating a lot of their assets so as to avoid getting fleeced later. I imagine some will take their wealth and leave the country. Barry and the Dimowits are killing a perfectly good country. May all the idiots that believe the socialist BS emanating from Barry’s and the Dim’s mouth lose their jobs.

President Rand Araskog once announced that he loved Twinkies, which were produced by Continental Bakeries, a wholly owned subsidiary of the ITT corporation. Now the president of the USA loves them even more.

Barack Obama is inviting us to petition him to save the Twinkie industry. No I am not making this up:

Heh the loss of Twinkies is no big deal for me since I have never had one. That is probably because I was born and raised in the Philadelphia area where the greatest sugary confection on the planet is made: The Tastykake Butterscotch Krimpet

Signature moist and fluffy sponge cake is accented with legendary Tastykake butterscotch icing, or infused with a variety of delicious jellies. With a distinctive and unique shape that fits right into your fingertips, each Krimpet is a perfect handheld treat. Tasytykake Krimpets have been considered icons of the brand since their introduction in 1927.

So the loss of the Twinkies brand is no biggie to me personally and the workers did it to themselves so I really do not feel bad about them (their kids I do since they have to suffer).

As the Philadelphia Inquirer put it:

Twinkies? Let them eat Tastykake

But Hostess has always been an also-ran in the Philadelphia region. This is Tastykake territory.

Hostess had a power lineup of Twinkies, Ding Dongs and Ho-hos. We knew about them. But they never had the same hold on our hearts as Krimpets, Cupcakes and Juniors.

For those growing up in the region, Hostess products were something you might see on the shelves of a 7-Eleven. (And you’d only go to a 7-Eleven if – and that’s a big if – there wasn’t a nearby Wawa – or a Turkey Hill for those from a little farther west].

Twinkies will survive. The company is under chaper 11 bankruptcy, so it means that it can sell off it’s assets. Namely Twinkies. So some other company will buy the brand and the recipe and keep on making them. With 500 million being made a year, there is a demand out there for them and so company will jump at the chance. Will the union members be re-employed? Probably not. Will the executives find another job. Probably. So basically the union has just made a lot of it’s members unemployed – way to go.

The fact is that the private equity firm behind Hostess is run by a very prominent Democrat with strong ties to the top party leadership and a very “progressive” man politically. I suppose Trumka’s rant has two meanings. The first meaning to the “unwashed masses” who would see such a statement and assume “evil Republicans” are behind it or the second meaning for those who know that Bain Capital has been run by prominent Democrats ever since Romney left about a decade ago.

Read the following article and scroll down to where it says “More: Hostess from icon to bust – a timeline” and start at the paragraph following. The article is from earlier this year.

I suppose this points to the value of something, including labour, being precisely what you can get someone to pay for it – a flexible yardstick. One thing I’ve found is that the middle-man always pulls a profit, though. If I want something out of the ordinary, it’s “rarely found and difficult to get” so the value goes up and I have to pay more than I would like. If I want to sell the same thing it’s “not many made and no-one wants them” so the value goes down and I get less.

In the case of Twinkies I’ve never eaten one, but my daughter has and liked them a lot, though they aren’t often available in Scotland where she is. I can’t attest to the delectability or otherwise. Obviously the American people have voted with their wallets on the value of Twinkies, and thus of the workforce making them. Ask too much, and people find an alternative. For addicts, expect some recipes burgeoning on the net.

Obama bragged that he wanted to do to “all of US manufacturing,” what he did to the auto industry. Let us see if he can take over this industry, turn it over to the unions, and then tell them how the “new” twinkies will be PC, multi grain, non GMO and healthy in enviromentally friendly wraps etc, all which will sell about as well as the Volt.

Wait! We have an opportunity to make some mighty fine lemonade here. Have the DOD contract with Hostess to supply Al Qaeda with an overabundance of Twinkies. They will fatten up and slow downthus making our job much easier. Kill ‘em with chlorestorol instead of bullets while supporting our economy…

It´s a conspiration to make you all thin: Think: Who was against obesity?, Which is the party that controls unions?…You see, the answer is obvious.
@E.M. We don´t know if you agree in this item of the liberal agenda.

Let us see’ Too bog to fail. 18,000 union members to lose their jobs in bankruptcy as well as pensions and benefits. Next Nationalize and give the assets to the unions plus Federal bail out, ala. General Motors. NEXT pg

Executive Order #3,045
Immediate:
Rescue plan for Hostess Brands
1. Make funds of $2 billion available.
2. Mandate Twinkies to be issued with all food stamps.
3. Military to institute twinkie breaks during training.
4. All government contractors to show proof of Twinkies/Wonder bread purchase before payment.

Now I will tell you what will happen:
o It happened the same with a similar local company: First, the unions began with what they are used to, then it was produced an unlawful board´s meeting, where the principal share holders were not notified, and the company was sold to a minor holder; then this minor share holder sold the company sold it to…….NESTLE.

Looks like some folks didn’t notice the “Humor” tag and the double entendre in things like “Politicians using Hos”… Oh Well… So I’ll address the serious comments with seriousy answers ;-)

@Jim2:

Yes, given the voting patterns, it’s quite likely that the recalcitrant bakers union did vote mostly for B.H.Obama. And yes, large swaths of people have no clue how anything works. The Amazing Power Of Stupid…

So ask folks “where does the toilette stuff go when you flush?”. Many will say “away” or “the sewer”. Ask how does that work? Blank stares, mostly. Some will say “pipes take it to the sewer plant”. Then ask “How does IT work? Then where does ‘the stuff’ go?” and mostly more blank stares.

Ask folks “What is electricity?” or “How do we make electricity?” or worse, “How does a car engine make it go?”. Amazing levels of blank stares.

Today I got to help a person with a Doctorate choose a printer. A computer died in one room, so they moved a computer from another room to replace it. The printer from the old computer was not selected, so they could not print. Yeah, I know, it’s probably more complicated than tying a suture (which I’ve done). In both cases you need to know how to do it, then it’s easy. Don’t know? Then it’s impossibly hard. I’ve just spent about 6 months getting to where I can make a consistently good loaf of bread that makes decent toast. I’m not particularly slow, and it isn’t particularly complicated; BUT, if you don’t know the details, it takes time and effort to learn them. A professional baker would laugh at my ‘skill’ level. (I’m hoping to master the Bagel, or at least get to Journeyman Bagel in the next 6 months… maybe someday to make a doughnut and eventually in a few years a ‘pain au chocolate’ I’m an idiot on pastries….)

In programming we called that “The Law Of Mutual Superiority”. “Anything you can program, I can improve, and anything I can program, you can improve.”

As society has become ever more complicated, it is ever more rewarding to know a great deal about one small slice, and be fairly ignorant of vast areas. The majority of all areas, in fact.

So we have politicians who are specialized in being liked, and know nearly nothing about economics other than a few platitudes. We have an electorate that, by and large, knows nothing about economics or business (and often what they do know is ‘exactly wrong’). We expect the interaction of those two groups to make good economic decisions. “Epic Fail” comes to mind…

What makes it worse is that large powerful bodies are dedicated to promoting economic theories that have demonstrably failed dozens of times. But the Power Of Stupid assures most folks don’t know that economic history. Since someone gains from the promotion, it continues, and the “useful idiots” continue to be useful…

So people naturally ‘vote for what they want’ and think that any argument to the contrary is equally founded only in what YOU want. There is no ‘reality’, just two competing wants… Yet there is an economic reality, even if they don’t know it…

Oh Well…

@GallopingCamel:

One of the prime tenants of Communism / Socialism is the abolition of bankruptcy. “Why” is pretty straightforward.

As a private enterprise fails due to excesses of taxation and wages over sales and profits, the usual capitalist method (that preserves private capital) is the bankruptcy. The stockholders are typically ‘wiped out’ and left with nothing or near nothing, and the bond holders (the basic money lender capitalists) are given the assets. In Bankruptcy Court, various creditors present their claims against those assets, and the receivers get some fees for managing them an parting them out. Each ‘creditor’ typically gets a small part of what is owed, and many often get nothing.

This lets the concern shed debts that make it uncompetitive and let it ‘start over’ if possible. Among those debts are Union Contracts and Pension Obligations. (They have been paying ‘insurance’ fees to the government run Pension Benefit Guarantee Corp, but it only pays modest pensions and large ones get ‘trimmed’…)

Well, in a Socialist Workers Paradise, having Capitalists get the capital (what’s left of it) and worse, get FEES for arranging the bankruptcy, is considered a horrible thing. That capital ought to belong to the Workers and Unions! So instead of bankruptcy, the capital is handed over to the Workers and Unions and the evil capitalists told to take a hike… Essentially, it changes the order of precedence from “Debt Holders, Bond Holders, Stock Holders, Labor” to be “Labor, Unions, SOME Debt Holders, maybe a bond holder…”

So ANY TIME there’s a large bankruptcy where capital might get a pay out (for things like selling the intangible value of the Twinkie name and formula) and Labor loses (a job, a pay rate, or a fat pension) expect any good Socialist to demand that this “injustice” be made right via screwing the capital holders and giving everything to Labor (as all good Socialists and Communists know that Marx said all capital really belongs to labor… )

That is WHY the way the GM ‘bailout’ was done is so onerous. It is right out of the Marxist playbook. GM was largely a wet kiss to the AutoWorkers Union. That GM is still saddled with about $2700 / car of excess costs for old labor agreements means they will continue to be uncompetitive. (This will eventually be ‘fixed’ via inflation making everyone poorer, buy hey, folks don’t notice that so much…)

So expect for the next 4 years that any large union company that is ‘busted’ by excess costs will have a government funded and operated ‘bailout’ via transfer of capital to labor…

@Boballab:

If your going to brag, then you have to bring enough for everyone to share ;-)

Twinkies are, um, a, er, how to describe…. Sugar foam flour baked thing full of sugar foam fat ‘cream’ filling. Oddly interesting flavor (probably an artificial one ;-) that is attractive, even as the non-nutritive foam slides away to oblivion… They have been known to keep for years in the original packaging. I’ve never seen one that ‘went bad’. I presume that if one is included in a casket at burial, it would be pristine to the archaeologists of 6073 A.D. trying to determine what it was made from ;-)

@P.G.Sharrow:

Near as I can tell, public unions were a creation of a law change about 20 years back. Need to change whatever law that was (which originally prevented public unions). Otherwise, for cities and counties they will do what is happening (happened) in Stockton California / Vallejo California / Orange County California…. etc. BK chapter mumble….

To the best of my knowledge there is no legal framework for State of Federal Bankruptcy. The Feds will simply inflate to oblivion (or until the iMF imposes ‘austerity’ – see Greece and Spain and Argentina and…) and the States will just have to hope the Feds fall down the rat hole fast enough for that inflation to wipe out enough of their debt (as they can neither inflate nor do bankruptcy – see the Greek problem today… only minus the IMF and German loans…)

OH, and on some thread someone asked “How can inflation change things if ALL currencies are mutually inflating” and I wanted to answer but didn’t get to it. The answer is both simple, and complex…

Usually inflation or exchange rate is stated as a ‘currency pair’, Dollar rising vs Euro or British Pound falling vs Yen. The reality is that ALL currencies move relative to “real stuff”, so the ‘pairs’ are useful for trading, but it’s the ‘real stuff’ that matters. So say it takes 1 ounce of gold to by “A Gentleman’s fine suit of clothing”. That ratio has held for hundreds of years. Now the dollar and Pound might both have a 1 : 1.5 ratio pretty much over all of the last 100 years (hypothetically) and BOTH have inflated a lot. So while it took $45 to buy a fine suit in ’70s and it’s about $1400 today, the ratio of dollar / pound didn’t change much. Both inflated, both lost value in ‘real stuff’. At the same time, Yen went from ‘crappy’ to ‘worth more’. It takes fewer yen to buy a ‘fine suit’ compared to dollars. Yet might have had SOME inflation, just a lot less, so might still take more to buy that suit of clothes.

I think Twinkies will be sold off to someone else and pressed back into being sold on the street for anyone to get a mouthful… It’s unclear if Ho Hos will make it back to the street, or be kept locked up indefinitely waiting for a better pimp private equity offer…

@SadButMadLad:

All depends on how “flexible” Obama and Dept.Of.Labor can be now that the election is out of the way. That’s 18,000 votes they can buy for the midterms using your money to ‘save the company’ (and screw the capital owners).

SOP for Socialism in the push to ‘avoid bankruptcy’ (and turn management over to the government and capital to the labor unions). Somebody has to take the fall… might as well be the folks that sunk $Millions into the company…

I’ve taken to calling it “The incredible Power Of Stupid”. What galls me is that the modern Democrats KNOW they are lying and using propaganda and have no shame at all about it. Seem to revel in ‘getting away with it’. Yet the Incredible Power Of Stupid keeps rewarding them…

The Fleecing of America has begun in earnest and they aren’t even trying to hide it…

@Petrossa:

That is because in Europe they have a very ‘Rubber Ruler” for “right” and “Left”. Part of why I insist on sticking with a consistent set of definitions and list of attributes. Why I’ve said “left” and “right” are functionally meaningless (and even did a posting on it).

Obama IS a socialist. By any and all objective measures. That the Europeans can’t map that correctly onto their constantly shifting ‘right / left’ non-metric doesn’t surprise me at all.

Just get out your copy of The Communist Manifesto, find the list of things to do, and compare to what Obama supports. Stay anchored in that original list of definitions. Similarly, look at the 1930’s US Progressive Movement ‘party goals’. Or get a copy of what Musolini said were the goals of Italian Fascism ( I’ve posted extracts in articles here). Now you have some consistent and most importantly NOT CHANGING standards by which to measure.

For completion, one could get a list of Capitalist principles from about the same era, but that takes some amount of picking and choosing as nobody was making such a manifesto…

Using that consistent yardstick, you can keep track of the “Socialism Creep” and will find that Europe ‘went around the bend’ not too long after W.W.II and the USA followed more slowly (with some backpedaling at the JFK and Reagan years). While Obama is hustling us as fast as he can to ‘catch up’ with Europe. IMHO we’re now at about a 1985 ish Euro-Socialism level. But catching up fast. Expect to see us catch Greece in about 4 to 8 years…

@Simon Derricutt:

See DirkH down below your comment ;-)

One other thing this explains, though, is also why my local grocery store can have bread made daily in the shop that is about 1/2 to 2/3 the price of that made by large factory bread makers with full automation and why I can make my own at home for about 1/10 the cost… Different “unions” and the Bakers Union clearly being the more pricey…

So I’ve been learning to be my own baker (and gotten decent at it). Next up, I’m going to start making my own yeast farm ( first experiments underway). Not just sourdough (mix of yeast and lactobacillus) but a reasonably pure strain of yeast, propagated as paste. So yes, we’ll ‘find a way’.

The problem, of course, is that this destroys the economies of scale and capital and slowly plunges the society back into a de-industrialized state… Next thing you know, I’ll be making a stone stove in the back yard to cook over using bamboo and wood chunks… Oh, wait, I’ve already started playing with that ;-)

While it would be better to have each of us specialized, applying more capital and less labor, and more economies of scale; the most insidious effect of excess taxation and excess union costs is just that at some point the DIY ‘excess costs’ are less than the ‘organized labor and taxes’ costs and you just shut down that part of the economy.

The “average person” stops going to the $25 – $50 / plate restaurant and just either hits the $5 fast food place or makes dinner at home for $1.

(When “on the road” in the ’80s I’d eat most all meals in restaurants, often ‘high end’. Last time I was ‘on the road’ I was polishing my ‘hotel cooking’ skills and had about 4/5 of meals made by me.)

So while in the ’80s I’d gone to Europe, now I’d not even think of it. Just too damn expensive. I’d also gone to Australia / New Zealand (and loved it!). Now? Not likely. Heck, I don’t even fly inside the USA unless there’s a terrible time pressure.

So how many folks did NOT get income from that ‘foregone expenditure’? Look at tourism levels in Greece for your answer…

In the ’70s & ’80s it was far cheaper and easier to fly from San Francisco to Los Angeles. You could hop a plane about 20 minutes after parking the car (about 100 yards from the terminal / counter / boarding area at San Jose). Now it’s ‘arrive an hour early, get groped and x-Rayed by Government Employees and pay more than it costs to drive. What had been a “couple of hours all up” and you could commute to LA and back same day, is now more like an all day travel nightmare… Oh, and instead of free parking, it’s $20 if you’re lucky…

I can now DRIVE door to door about 1 to 2 hours longer than flying (depending on exact destination in the L.A. basin) and cheaper too. So how many folks in the Airlines Unions, the TSA Union, the ground folks Union etc. am I not supporting? Only thing that kept the game going was the rabidly growing local economy. But Governor Grey (out) Davis, Rino Ahnold, and now Gov. Moonbeam have fixed that… At “rush hour” today I was on one of the freeways that ALWAYS came to a dead halt. It was doing 65 MPH. HP Just announced an $8.x Billion charge to earnings and dropping sales of printers, PC, etc.

The fantasy is thinking this is going to turn around any time soon. H.P., Dell, Microsoft, Intel, the whole lot of them are NOT growth stories anymore. They are ‘hanging on’ stories.

So while Governor Moonbeam raises tax rates, business shrinks, and I’m making bread and learning to make bagels instead of doing computer programming and buying dinner at Red Lobster….

You can tax lightly and grow, or tax heavily and shrink. It’s that simple.

Too many fleas (Unions or otherwise) and the host gets sick, skinny, then dies.

@David:

Bingo! But all those union jobs will be ‘saved’ even as the capital is squandered and the costs put onto the taxpayers…

@Tom Bakewell:

Hallal Twinkies? I love it! ;-)

@Barryjo:

Yup. Frankly, if it wasn’t for the election and the ‘giggle factor’ of rescuing the stereotypical ‘junk food’, I think we’d have already seen a ‘bail out’…

@Adolfo:

OMG! I’d not thought of that! Wonder if “Barry” had the C.I.A. talk to Hostess and The Unions to assure a failure of the pudgy snack business! Perhaps a sub-rosa gift to Madam Obama!!
;-)

@P.G. Sharrow:

That’s how it ought to go down per the Communist Manifesto and the Socialist Playbook. (No smiley on that one… it really IS how they want things done…)

@Tckev:

Clearly what is needed is a government funded R&D effort to find new markets for the Twinkie. Given there indestructible nature in storage, NASA could easily use them in space flight operations. Furthermore, given their fluffy rubbery texture, they ought to make great bio-not-quite-degradable mattress fillings! Heck, with a little extra work, one could likely use them to make a ‘run flat tire’ filling and with a small powered extrusion gun, use them for weather strip caulking.
;-)

@PowerGrab:

Twinkies will NEVER die!!! (or rot, or be eaten by anything but humans…)

I’ve actually eaten one that was a couple of years old. Don’t remember the exact context. I was stuck somewhere working on something that that was what was stuck in the back of some breakroom closet… Despite being WAY out of date, it was indistinguishable from ‘fresh’…

@PhilJourdan:

Every bailout accomplishes two very important things:

1) More voters for Obama and beholden to the Democrats.

2) Less capital left in private hands. Essential to the march to Socialism.

Hey, Jalapeño Twinkies! What an idea!

@R. de Haan:

Krugman in a dingbat economist. Hey, he got the Nobel Price in Economics so that Certifies that he’s an Economic Dingbat!

Thanks to all here for the comments and recipes – my daughter can now make her own Twinkies and I’m getting more insight.

As regards the sarcasm, EM, it’s said that many a true word is spoken in jest. That applies here, as a microcosm of what’s happening generally. Although here in France the workaday restaurants will give you a good meal for around 12 euros (about $15) that’s still around 10 times what the ingredients would cost me to buy, and I know I’m paying at least 4 times the cost of production of those ingredients with the rest going into distribution, packaging, Taxes and Taxes. And then a bit more tax. That makes the savings of doing it yourself (for most things) really worth it.

If I remember correctly, States are not supposed to go into debt.
Due to a constitutional amendment imposed by the Federal Army in the 1860s, the states are responsible for Federal debt. The 13th amendment that had existed for 40 years was erased and the New 13th, as well as the 14th and 15th amendments were adopted with the encouragement of state legislatures by “house arrest” thru Federal army action. pg

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